“You ready to go?” Maximus asked having opened the door a crack and stuck his head in.

I shot him a look over my shoulder and went back to pulling on my shirt. “Can’t a man get dressed in private anymore? Thought you would have gotten a good enough look at my junk when I was in the swamp the other day. Though, I hope you accounted for shrinkage.”

He didn’t say anything to that, not even a snort of disgust, so I turned around and looked at him. He looked forlorn and serious, face wane.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m not going with you,” he said.

“What?”

He sighed and shut the door behind him, leaning against it. “I know I promised I’d do the show with you and Perry, I know Jimmy was counting on it. But I can’t go. I have to stay here. I’m sorry.”

I nodded, understanding. “Rose.”

He chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “Yeah. She’s doing a bit better now. She can talk and kind of care for herself. She doesn’t remember me though. She doesn’t remember any of us. She doesn’t know what she is.”

“Shit.”

“Doctors said amnesia is a side effect, that I should be happy that she’s at least improving. Dex, she has no one but me now. Maryse has now been proclaimed dead. She doesn’t have any family. She doesn’t have anyone to look after her.”

I straightened my shirt out and looked him in the eye. “Maximus, you go do what you have to do. Perry and I will figure things out on our own. We’ll be okay.”

I picked up my duffel bag that they’d brought to the hospital for me and made my way over to the door. I stood a foot away from the flannel-coated, red-headed giant and it struck me with surprising emotion that this might be the last time I’d see the douchecanoe again.

“Take care, man,” I said gruffly, holding out my hand.

He grasped it, squeezing tight enough to break a normal man’s hand. When I thought it was time for him to let go, he pulled me to him slightly and peered down at me.

“Dex, I know I can’t stop you two. And I know it’s not my place anymore to tell you otherwise. I don’t want to do to you what Maryse did to Rose and me. You love her and she loves you and I reckon maybe that’s just enough to even things out. You take care of Perry, ya hear? And take care of yourself.”

Fuck. I needed to get out of the room before I started having my period.

I gave him a curt nod. “See ya, Maximus.”

I left the room and walked down the hall. Perry was waiting for me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Baby, please, I’m going to come,” I moaned, thrusting into her, afraid to slow my pace.

Perry kissed me deeply, her pulse racing in her lips and whispered, “Just go slower.”

I threw my head back and tried to steady myself. “I’ll try but if I blow my load early, it’s all your fault.”

“You’re so romantic.”

Fuck romance. This was serious business. My balls were so blue, they were navy. “Baby, it’s been forever since I’ve been inside of you.”

“It’s been five days,” she said. “And your rib is still hurting you, I can tell.” I grunted and decided to shut her up by pulling out of her and flipping her around on her stomach, spreading her legs with my knees.

“Fine, you want slow, you got it,” I said gruffly into her ear. I pulled back a bit on her hair because I knew she loved it and I liked to pretend I was riding her like a cowboy. My wild mustang steed.

I licked my fingers and started running them from her lower back, down the crack of her ass, past her wet hole, all the way to her clit. And back again. Slowly. So slowly. Just as she asked.

She tensed under my touch. I knew I was pushing boundaries with her, but what was the use of boundaries if they weren’t there to be pushed?

I leaned forward on her, making sure she felt the weight of me. “Is that slow enough for you?”

She groaned, her breath coming shorter and harder. Her ass moved in rhythm against my fingers and I rubbed her clit with silky pressure. If I was going to come like hell in a handbasket, then she was going to as well and way before I did.

I kept at it until she started squirming under my fingers and did what I loved most, begged me to put myself inside her. I partially obliged. Even though my swollen balls were begging for release, I wet my tip against her folds and stroked it up and down, following where my fingers had been. She started moaning louder, her legs spreading further. Perfection.

I finally gave her what she wanted, what we both needed. I thrust myself inside her, keeping myself pressed against her back, wanting to stay as close as possible. The bliss was unimaginable.

“Can you feel me?” I murmured, feeling myself slowly losing control. Five days had felt like a lifetime.

“I feel you,” she gasped. “All of you.”

I pounded into her, quickening my pace again, pushing myself and her to the edge. This was how I loved her. I loved her so much. I wanted her to feel my love, every single inch of it.

We came loud and hard and fast and I don’t know if it was the endorphins I was high on or something otherwordly, but the bedroom really did seem to shimmy and shake, sparkle and warp, all outside of my view. Maybe we were creating tears in the fabric of the world. Or maybe, maybe we were just creating something new. Something wonderful.

Fuck, she was amazing. This was amazing.

I rolled over onto my back, my hand resting on her wonderful ass. “That was long overdue,” I said, once I caught my breath.

“I can see it was,” she mused, still panting. “I hope you’re ready to go again tonight because we have a lot of lost ground to cover. Your cuts are all healed now, and apparently your rib is no excuse.”

I let out a small laugh and grinned to myself. “Give me five minutes, baby, and you’ll be the one begging me to stop.”

She giggled, so fucking cute, and snuggled up to me. “I love you,” she said, tracing the bridge of my nose with her finger.

“I love you, too.”

More than ever.

***

Even though we’d just got back, it hadn’t taken long for Perry and I to get back into the swing of things. Now that everything was out in the open and we were luxuriating in our feelings for each other (at least I was —she couldn’t tell me she loved me enough), we had our “normal” lives to plan.

Obviously Perry’s home was my home and my hone was hers. We knew we were going to have to have a meeting with Jimmy soon and we weren’t sure if we could count on having EIT as a job in the future. But we made a pact to each other that we would think about all the alternatives, to keep trying, to never give up. I offered to take care of Perry no matter what happened, but she was still determined to earn her own wages and I’d support her no matter what she chose, whether it was still working as a host at Shownet or bartending at a bar down the street.

The other thing she had to deal with was her family. She couldn’t avoid them forever and though New Orleans put us under a great strain, I could still see how her severed ties with her family was really bothering her.

“Why don’t I take us down to Portland next weekend?” I asked Perry. We were both lying lengthwise on the couch, half-naked as we’d been a lot lately, and watching Fawlty Towers again. Fat Rabbit was on the floor and eyeing us with doggy disdain. He was the only reason why I wasn’t getting a blow job at the moment—we all found it too strange with a dog in the room.

She tensed up and I didn’t know if it was because I had just started to put my hand down her pants. She swatted at my hand and gave me a dirty look. “You can’t turn me on and talk about my parents at the same time.”

I sighed and removed my hand. Fair enough. “So, what do you say?”

She exhaled sharply through her nose and mulled it over for quite some time. Finally she said, “Not next weekend. But soon. Maybe in April. Or May.”

“Perry you can’t avoid them forever. What about Ada?”

“I text her every day. I called this morning.”

“You know what I mean. She needs your support. She needs to see you. Remember what you went through when you were a little fifteen?”

She nodded. I tried slipping my fingers down her stomach but she was too quick for me and hit me again.

I kissed the back of her head. “Whatever you choose, just know I’ll be with you if you need me. I’d never let you do this on your own. I know how tough families can be.”

“But they don’t really like you, Dex.”

And I didn’t really like them. “True. But that’s just right now. I’m your boyfriend. I love you. You love me. Maybe over time, they will change their tune. And if they don’t, so what? You’re with me and that’s all that matters.”

We lapsed into silence for a few moments, watching Basil slap Manuel around.

“Dex,” she said softly.

“Mmmhmmm.”

“Have you been having dreams about your mom again?”

I swallowed hard. “No,” I told her honestly. “I haven’t.” The last thing I saw of her was when I had that vision of us in the boat, when she told me she loved me, the cryptic things she said about Michael.

“You seemed to be dreaming about her last night.”

This was news to me. “Oh?”

“It wasn’t necessarily bad. You were just calling out for her. You sounded…upset. Like sad.”

I held her closer to me. “I don’t remember.”

“I don’t blame you. You’ve been through so much. I don’t know what New Orleans did to us but…god Dex, I’m going to be having nightmares for weeks to come, I know it. Finding you buried in that coffin…” she trailed off and let out a sob, shaking slightly.

“Hey, baby,” I murmured into her neck. “We made it. I’m alive. You’re alive. We’re here. We’re home. We’re home.”

I held her like that until the end of the show when my cell rang.

I peered at it. A New Orleans area code.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Dex,” Maximus’s drawl came through the air, thicker now that he was with his adopted brethren.

“Maximus,” I said. “How’s life? How is Rose?”

A pause. “She’s better. She still doesn’t know who I am, not really, but I’ve got an apartment set-up for us in the Quarter and I hope to move her in there soon. I’ve got some of her managers handling Nameless for us, so at least that will stick around for her in case she regains her memory soon.”

“Well that’s great,” I told him. “You can still go drink your face off for free.”

Perry rolled over to face me. “Tell him I say hi.”

“Perry says hi,” I told him. “She also says you’re ugly.”

“Shut up,” she said, hitting me again.

“So violent,” I mouthed at her.

“You need to get a room,” Maximus said.

“We have one, you’re the one intruding.”

Silence. He cleared his throat.